Monday, December 21, 2009
"It's going to be an albatross around the neck of this party."
My thoughts exactly on the crappy healthcare bill (Do you remember being taught in civics class that our primary function as citizens is to serve as profit sources for corporations? Was I home sick that day or something?) that the Democrats are rushing to wrap up and leave like a big steaming dog turd under the national tree on Christmas Eve.
There's a part toward the end where Kuttner bravely tries to sound optimistic about the possibility that Obama's crashing poll numbers will lead him to swing progressive as fall 2010 approaches and his base shows signs of thinking "what's the point of voting for Democrats who won't even push for a measly public option?" and stays home on election day, and for just a moment I had sugar-plum visions of 2010 as The Year of the Suddenly Progressive President, but then Taibbi brought me back to Earth:
MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, obviously, it's too early to completely abandon hope that he's going to turn things around. But I think that's a belief that's not really based on evidence. If you look at the evidence of how he's behaved so far, and who he's got, you know, working in the White House, and who he's getting his money from, and how the party has behaved over the last couple of decades. You're really basically relying upon the impression that he gives as a kind, decent, warm-hearted intellectual guy. That's what the basis of that faith that there's going to be this turnaround. It's really not anything that's actually concretely happened that would give you reason to think that.Nope, not much reason at all. Damn my dark evidence-based heart.
Yeah, and with "progressives" like this:
ROBERT KUTTNER: The other thing that's missing, if you compare him with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the other thing that's missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him. That certainly describes the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. It describes the abolitionists and Lincoln. It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where's the movement?
It's call the Netroots, idiot, which in large part helped to elect Mr. Hopey Changey. Now it's in complete revolt and all Rahm and the other corporate sleezebags do is beat up on it, as if we're the problem. American Prospect and the wonks are beating up on it too, as if they're the "serious" ones. Yeah, the "serious" ones who thought stumbling into Afghanistan was just fine and dandy. Same folks.
Many in the Netroots are pledging to never vote for a Democrat again. Myself, I'll vote socialist or Green. I'm done with the goddamned kabuki.
"Make me do it," indeed.
: Monday, December 21, 2009 9:37:00 AM << Home
